


Contextual Priorities - Or Sansa's First and Sandor's Last Year Teaching at Hogwarts

by BlueVelvet



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Beauxbâtons!Sansa, Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Clegane, Drinking Games, Educational Disagreements, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Hippogriff Riding Sandor, Hogwarts!Sandor, Runes Professor Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-27 08:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16215383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueVelvet/pseuds/BlueVelvet
Summary: AU in which Sansa and Sandor are both Hogwarts Professors.Freshly arrived from Beauxbâtons, the new Hogwarts Runes Mistress fails to get along with the surly Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor. Seriously, what is wrong with the wizard? Why is he so rude, so tense and surly? Is it just runes that he can't stand or is it... Merlin forbid... personal?A very humble pastiche and hommage to the marvellous PsiCygni and to her efficient and adorkable narrative style.





	1. Patrols and other Extracurricular Activities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mesdemoiselles, hold on tight! Incoming : Sandor herding thestrals while riding a hippogriff.

The last time Mademoiselle Sansa Stark takes a walk around the formal gardens of Beauxbâtons, the air is softly warm and she is wondering if she will rue her idea of accepting a post as a Runes professor at Hogwarts. She ambles down the paved way between the crisp hedges until she reaches the central fountain. She lets her slim fingers extend to the clear running water and lets some of her magic flow through it. As a shiver passes through her spine, the garden rustles. The symmetrical design of the garden has rearranged to form a new axis, pointing North North West. She whispers a "merci" to her darling Académie and goes packing with a bittersweet sensation in her heart.

Her first walk up the Hogwarts lane is by contrast under a dark and menacing sky. Sansa thinks Hogwarts is every muggle's idea of wizardry—contorted on its many sprawling wings, eerie mistmatched towers piercing the clouds, fearsome as a dragon protecting its egg. Sansa wonders what kind of treasure it may be hiding. 

Sansa is not the only professor starting a new assignment this year. Professor Sandor Clegane, formerly Care of Magical Creature professor, has finally given in to the Headmaster's pleas and accepted the post of Defence against the Dark Arts. He is needed there and he knows it. The cursed job. He feels it in his bones. His last year at Hogwarts.

The first time Professor Clegane sees Professor Stark, she does not notice him. Emerging from under a tapestry leading to a flight of stairs, he hears her yelp and sees her leg sink down in a step every first year learns to be weary of within a week. For Clegane, his immediate impression is that she is too soft for this school. Before he can go and give her a hand, though, she sings a short incantation with a clear voice and the staircase start glowing with a swirl of blue runes, which seem to twirl her out of the trap step. He thinks she is the embodiment of Ravenclaw, with her cooper hair and her blue dress. He will learn later that she comes from Beauxbâtons and shake his head.

The first time Professor Stark sees Professor Clegane, he is landing a dark hippogriff on the rolling grass with the herd of Thestrals descending in his trail. The Thestrals needed to be out one last time before they were to be harnessed for the student's arrival on the next day, or so Professor Tarth explains to her later that evening. Before she learns any of this, shivering in the damp wind and looking at the burly wizard , atop the rearing hippogriff with his cloak flapping in the rushing wind, Sansa cannot help but marvel at of how much he looks like the embodiment of the nature here, and how foreign and elemental that seems to her.

The first time Sansa is introduced to the school as Professor Stark, she stands up neatly from her high-backed chair at the high table and Clegane sees the male half of the population immediately start to fantasize about the cooper-haired beauty who smiles benevolently at the student body. He is the first to stop clapping.

Their first discussion, if we can call it that, happens on an evening patrol. She is tired and trying her best to be polite, asking him about Defence Against the Dark Arts, a subject that has no equivalent in Beauxbâtons. He tells her in the harsh light of his lumos to "save her manners for someone who wants them". Stung, she retaliates he should "saves his brusqueness for when he patrols the dungeons." He is spared having to find a reply by the discovery of a happily reunited couple making out in an alcove, after which they go their separate ways. 

Their following interaction are similar. Rude opposition from him and prim retorts from her. 

For a long time, when they do speak, they argue. They argue about teaching. They argue about practical teaching, though both of them prefer hands-on method. They argue about the fact that they both wanted to teach a practical lesson in the same room without having booked it beforehand. She, because the room is wrought with runes and symbols she had been dying to show her students ever since she first set foot there, he, because the walls are spell-absorbant (thanks to a set of runes there, she points out) and it is a safer teaching environment than his own classroom (which he points out is exactly the purpose of these runes, runes, that she could have taught as well on a crummy blackboard without having to gallivate around the castle with a group of third years). Their argument occupy more of their conscious thoughts than each would be willing to admit.

She is impressed by how seriously the students seem to take Professor Clegane's class. She is further impressed when she learns that Defense Against the Dark Arts is not even his topic of preference. She hears from the Ravenclaw Head Girl that it's common knowledge he would much rather teach Care of Magical Creatures, but that he accepted as a special favour to the Headmaster, Professor Selmy, knowing that the post is most likely cursed as no professor of Defence Agains the Dark Arts has lasted longer than a year for a few decades. Sansa thinks she understands his intensity a little better.

Clegane has never seen so many students keen on runes. It seems that runes are everywhere. It annoys him because he knows what is brewing in this part of the wizarding world, and she seems blissfully unaware of the context. She seems to think it is a good idea to infuse the mind of students with archaic and vaguely useful pieces of magic that are better kept in dusty grimoires than close at hand, while it is probable many of them will meet their fate in the coming war and would be better served learning how to watch their back than read the ceilings of Hogwarts. He grits his teeth and starts a duelling club.

She starts a book club together with the Muggle Studies Professor. The signs reads "The Return of the Native - moody muggle novel for avid readers - all years welcome!" Exasperation threatens to overcome him.

The first time Professor Clegane hears Professor Stark argue with someone else than him, it is in the staff room, with Professor Stannis Baratheon of all people, stiff Transfiguration professor. Surprisingly, pretty soft Sansa Stark teaches something Baratheon finds dangerous, what she calls "shadow-work". Every adult with a pair of eyes can see her students are affected by it, though not in a bad way, matured more like. Something about owning your dark magic in order not to throw it out destructively. Sansa says it is timeless magic that is crucial to the balance of a witch or wizard. Baratheon says it is poisonous French idiocy. Brienne of fucking Tarth, flying instructor and usually protector of all things Mademoiselle Sansa, shifts uneasily in her seat. But before Clegane can fling in Professor Stick-up-his-ass Baratheon's face that he is the one who has the most warped ideas of them all here with his bloody fire cult, not to mention the red harpy he got hired as Divination Professor, ruddy Tyrion Lannister, Charms Professor, opens his witty mouth. Sandor checks the frustrating feeling of having wanted to come to Professor Stark's rescue, and leaves once he notices Deputy Headmaster Varys is looking at him with too much of a knowing eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Don't we love how Sandor really wishes for an occasion to come to her rescue, despite Sansa handling herself quite well on her own?
> 
> I have this idea that Catelyn Stark would probably have gone to Beauxbâtons (obviously not Ned though). Anyhow I feel like Sansa, given the choice, would have chosen Beauxbâton over any other magical school. And since she would have been primed to act the perfect witch-demoiselle, I felt it normal for her to have more of a verbal bite. French ladies of my acquaintance know how to hold their own in bouts of verbal sparring (while remaining super feminine about it)(envy!).
> 
> About the lack of Defense Against the Dark Arts classes in Beauxbâtons- This is of course pure cultural speculation coming from me, but France is often referred to as the "garden of Europe", it has a marvellously mild and easy to live in climate. I feel that the idea of evil hasn't historically held much sway over conscious French culture, at least before the French Revolution, where the problem was sort of shoved in everyone's face (absolutely no pun intended, I'm dead serious). I picture Beauxbâton as this secluded, almost fairy-tale-ish seventeenth century palace. Therefore, I thinks it's fair to speculate that legendary millennia-old Hogwarts would have been any Runes Mistress first choice.
> 
> Stay tuned, the next chapter is coming up right away!


	2. Drinking Games and Stunning Runes

The first time one of their disagreements finally goes too far is around Hallowe'en. She has the fourth years right after he does, and more often than not the students come in exhausted from his class, if not injured. Sansa knocks and invite herself in his office just to ask the rough professor if he could please just to tone it down a little at the end of his class. He says he'll see them prepared for whatever is coming, not that a little bird like her can understand it, spoilt and used to the song-like world of Beauxbâtons as she is. She narrows her eyes at him and says "You're rude," and with a glint of a tear in her ocean eyes "and you don't know what you're talking about". He admire her sudden claws, and later feels the sharp pangs of shame when Tarth and Lannister tell him in clipped tones around a pint at the Hog's Head about the Red Wedding and the scattered family members she still has.

They do not speak again for almost a month.

Around the end of November, there is a staff party at the Three Broomsticks and the two of them are thrown in together in a booth. They exchange a look, then pointedly look away. They order their drinks and still they do not speak, but once they each have their beverage in hand she speaks up. Twirling the tiny green umbrella that came with her drink between her delicate fingers, she says in a low voice meant just for him that she still cannot figure if he has something against her, her teaching or just runes as a subject. He looks at her without saying anything, so she continues, "I get that you think this is not important. I get that you think it's not practical." He denies having ever said that so she asks him, "Then what is it?" Crossing his arms over his chest, he says he has nothing against her, or her runes. What irks him, is teaching without knowing the context in which these children will become adult. She cocks her head and frowns, asking him what he sees is the current context that should so determine her teaching. 

But before he can reply, their conversation is cut short by Tyrion who calls for a bout of drinking game. After Melissandre's "Never have I ever snooped through a colleague's things" and Stannis's "Never have I ever stolen from the potion store, it is Tyrion's turn and he says, "Never have I ever imagined someone here naked." Stannis and Melissandre laugh and drink, Tyrion, Shae, Jamie and a beet-red Brienne all drink. Sansa with a sip and a blush looks on the side locks eyes with Clegane who smirks and tips his butterbeer bottle with gusto.

Later, Professor Tarth insists Professor Stark floos back to the castle instead of talking the long walk, and Sansa almost pouts in her drunken state. She has just enough time to wave at Sandor before disappearing in a flare of green flames.

The next day, Professor Clegane asks one of his worst sixth-year student, Podrick Payne to demonstrate a stunning hex. The pudgy boy manages to knock back seven students by drawing the rune of aard with barely a look of concentration on his face. Sandor manages to stay on his feet, though he staggers back a step. Students whisper to each other while Professor Clegane bellows "Stunning HEX, Payne! HEX! Do you know how to use your wand?! 10 points from Hufflepuff!" After the class he takes the boy aside and relentlessly questions the boy until he spills having learnt the defensive rune while researching an assignment for Professor Stark's class and admits having never tried it with people present before. He questions him until the boy realizes the foolishness of testing unknown magic on his classmates, realizes the sheer idiocy of showing his hand in a context such as this. When the heavy classroom door thuds behind the Hufflepuff, he passes a hand on his weary face, looks to the ceiling, swears and says "20 points to Hufflepuff for showing a professor what a fool he is."

At the next staff meeting, Clegane can feel her flicking her gaze at him from time to time from where she is seated across the table. While Stannis drones on and on about where he is at in his lesson plan for OWL-level students, he locks eyes with her and she musingly looks him in the eyes. Then it is her turn to report on her class, she breaks the spell and reports she is preparing to teach warding and shielding runes to her OWL-level students. Professor Varys interrupts to ask whether or not Professor Clegane was turning to warding spells next. "Aye," he replies curtly. With his ever-annoying poker face the Deputy Headmaster suggests the Runes Mistress and the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor do a bout of joint teaching. "After all, not all students take Runes, but all wards are made strong by runes." When Professor Stark replies she would not want to intrude on Professor Clegane's class, Varys cuts her off by a "nonsense". After a shared look, they awkwardly comply, both wanting to be rid of the whole faculty's attention as quickly as possible. 

This is how they find themselves one evening preparing their lesson together in her office, which is by far the coziest of the two. Cream-carpeted, dripping in pastel drapes with floor-to ceiling bookcases and silk-covered armchairs, the space is a miniature Beauxbâton with a view to the Hogwarts grounds. They get to work, and when they exchange notes and course plans, they find they are of the same mind about how they should go about teaching wards. They practice the demonstration until it seems to them both fluid, succinct and clear and decide on practice assignments and homework. By the time the sun has set, they have made good progress and though neither would admit to the feeling of excitement at the prospect of teaching together, they each feel light and electrified by it.


	3. Wards and Puzzles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the last chapter, Deputy Headmaster Varys encourages out two favourite teachers to teach wards together. Let's see how they manage and what follows.

Their first joint class, fifth-year students have their eyes and ears open and stare at them like they are drinking their words. They each wonder if students are always like this in the other's class. Students have picked up on the tension crinkling between their two professors, and though they are interested in the warding spells and strengthening runes that are being taught, they are also keenly curious as to what relation exists between Mademoiselle Stark and Professor Clegane, who both are heartthrobs with the student population in their own way. Whispers in the student body follow them around, and if Clegane rolls his eyes at the teen's antics, Sansa cannot help but smile secretly when she is by herself.

They grade their students' homework together, and find it so much more heartening, that it soon becomes a habit. They sit side-by-side, sometimes reading out loud the bright or the dumb excerpts from their student's essay. Reading leads to conversation about their respective cursus, and conversations lead to curiosity and Sansa expressing a desire for him to teach her some of his cursus if he is willing. He replies that he needs to get something in return for his pains. She cocks her head, waiting for him to finish his thought. He gets out that wants her to show him what he's been missing with runes all these years. Her eyes sparkle with a combination of mischief and gratitude.

When it is time for their first rune session, Clegane realizes he would prefer something more physical to get the sizzling energy he feels around her out of his system. But it turns out that the session is not at all what Sandor had pictured. "I want you to understand the power of symbols," she declares with a commanding tone that has him smirk, "I want you to feel them in yourself. And the best way to do that is shadow-work, the integration of opposites." 

They ward the classroom and then she has him sitting cross-legged in front of her. Both his palms outstretched, she asks him to picture two symbol, one in each hand: the first representing what he would never want to be like, the second what he would like to be. He sighs and she insists he closes his eyes and really picture it. But his magic is surprisingly quick to respond, and he soon feels an gentle heat simmering in both his palms. "Open your eyes," she says with a clear voice. There, in his left hand is an image of an ugly fire salamander crawling in agony, and in his right hand is a dark strong thestral flapping its bat-like wings. "Now," she says, "let your magic unite them". He feels the surge of energy flare up deep in his chest in response and watches, as if hypnotized, as his hands draw together until they join in a crackling flash. He gasps. There, in his cupped hands is a small thunderbird proudly flapping its wings. She beams at him with blue eyes brimming with emotion. He blinks at his thunderbird, and as if on impulse, he slowly presses both of his hands to his heart, feeling the breadth of his inhale and his inner space clearing out. 

She lets him savour the experience. At last, she asks "tell me how you feel". He takes a deep breath and tells her, "senses heightened, but… serene." He swallows and concentrates on the sensation "it feels like I have space… more space to breathe." 

He does not tell her, however that he feels more keenly than ever before the curse of his post dangling sharply above his head. 

Their first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson is, there's no other way to put it, magical. She is the quickest study he ever had despite not having an ounce of reflex in her. It is frustratingly refreshing. She is inventive, but also proud and therefore stiff. She is hard to wind up, gives up when she should press on. Sandor is relentless, changing his game in a protean manner, sometimes winding her up verbally, sometimes throwing hexes, sometimes demonstrating a technique, sometimes lunging at her physically. At one point he feels they have done all they could for the day, and some. She insists they end by doing something together, and not against each other, because the constant opposition takes a toll on her. Together, they blast a practice mannequin to smithereens and she collapses in a tinkle of laughter. They end up sitting with their back to the wall sharing a bottle of French elf-made wine she brought.

She is the first person to whom he tells the story of his scars since he became an adult.

He is the first wizard she wouldn't mind touching since Peter and Ramsay. 

It so happens that the first time she touches him and the first time he touches her are not the same, though they happen the same week. She touches his forearm one day at the high table, when some bullshit article comes in the Daily Prophet, again associating the Defence Against the Dark Art professor to his Death Eater monster of a brother. She is seated beside him. On his bad side. Graceful and lady-like, she places a soothing hand on his sleeve cutting off the internal steam of anger building up inside him by squeezing his arm.

The first time he touches her is in the library. She is having trouble with a high shelf containing books set aside for the staff. Obviously nobody has thought to go through the motions of keying the warded shelf to her magic at the beginning of the term. She is standing on the tip of her toes slim wand extended from her slender arm, trying to puzzle out the locking spell, when he arrives behind her. He wraps his paw around her white wrist, careful but firm, and sends some of his magic rushing through her wand hand. The feel of her soft skin, and that of her clear running magic mingling with his heavy blocky one is not something he was prepared for or is likely to forget any time soon. He releases her wrist and rasps, "here," taking a step back, "the shelf'll recognize your bird magic now." He doesn't look at her, if he did, he would see her in the confused blushing heaving state he left her in.

He does recognize, however, that he is in trouble when it concerns this pretty little bird. That night, in his patrols, he doesn't stalk as stoically the hallways as what he usually does but feels listless and bad tempered. When he passes by an alcove and notices a slight shimmer, he draws his wand and carefully senses the pattern of magic spreading in front of him the way Professor Stark has taught him in their last session. There is no doubt as to what it is, he is facing a very agile set of wards. He does not bother unlocking them elegantly like she would, but slashes through them with brutal anger. He hears a shriek and he sees the pair of six-years lovers clinging to each other. The gall of these students has him snarl and he sends them both back to their respective house with a week's worth of detention. He feels his work is turning against him in the worst way possible, his hopeless attraction to the lovely Runes Mistress and the curse are making his head spin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh, what will Sandor do to try to regain control?
> 
> I realized there was no way I could wrap up this story, meaning, get these two lovers safely in each other's arms, in three chapters. So expect more!
> 
> The experiment Sansa has Sandor do is an actual (muggle!) symbolic exercise you can do to work on what Jung calls your shadow that I've picked up in this book: https://www.amazon.ca/Befriend-Your-Shadow-John-Monbourquette/dp/0232524300 which I recommend if you enjoy learning more about humans in general and your friends, family and yourself more specifically.


End file.
